Ever since the Civil Rights movement, African Americans have tended to favour the Democrats. What's more, just as popular musicians in Britain tend to keep quiet about politics unless they are Labour supporters, American popular musicians (with the exception of country singers, who are overwhelmingly Republican) tend only to talk about politics if they are Democrats.

50 Cent and LL Cool J are prominent exceptions to these two tendencies though, so might Mr West be another?

One thing that struck me as a worst case scenario, if Bernie loses the Democratic nomination could he stand as an Independent in the election? I know that if he did, the chances are that the non Republican vote would be split allowing one of the knuckle draggers to win. Really a worst case.

The same possibility occurred to me on the other side -- Trump does not get Rep nomination, so storms off with his toys and sets himself up as an Independent, splitting the knuckle-dtagger vote.
Could all get very messy

A four-way split vote with two major independents would be pretty crazy. The news channels are actually talking about Sanders now. If he teams up with Elizabeth Warren they they will certainly succeed in being the number one choice amongst the age group that votes the least.

One thing that struck me as a worst case scenario, if Bernie loses the Democratic nomination could he stand as an Independent in the election? I know that if he did, the chances are that the non Republican vote would be split allowing one of the knuckle draggers to win. Really a worst case.

I suspect that he would decide not to do it for precisely that reason, although in fact it probably wouldn't make much difference even he did.

If Mr Sanders did run as an Independent with Democrat opposition, I doubt that he'd get a significant vote share anywhere bar Vermont and perhaps DC. The Republicans know perfectly well that they have no chance in Vermont and DC and put little energy into campaigning in those places, and their candidate might well place third behind Mr Sanders and the Democrat candidate.

Even if Mr Sanders won both places, which is improbable, that would still give him only six electors. It's unlikely that those six electors will be crucial to the outcome of the election - and if it turns out that they will be, they have the option of turning faithless (see footnote if you need this explained) and electing the Democrat as President.

That would be controversial, and faithless voting is technically a misdemeanor in Vermont (although it's never been prosecuted in any of the states which have a law against it). But it's pretty much a given that Mr Sanders and his people would prefer a Democrat to a Republican, and he might actually encourage his electors to turn faithless in that situation.

Explanation. When you vote in the US Presidential election, you don't actually vote for the person you want as President. Instead, you vote for the people who will attend the meeting which elects the President - the electors, as they are called.

So if you were in California last time around and thought you had voted for Barack Obama, you actually voted for a slate of 55 people who would go to that meeting and vote for Mr Obama. You had the option to vote instead for a slate of 55 different people who would have gone to the meeting and voted for Mitt Romney.

But the electors don't actually have to vote in the way that the public vote has mandated them to. It's unusual for them not to but by no means unknown, and an elector who does this somewhat irregular thing is said to be faithless.

Now for extra marks explain the process by which the Electors are appointed to the college, and how this process was set up so that the "sound" people (land-owners, the wealthy) could ensure that they weren't going to be bound by the stupid voting habits of the peasants...

One thing that struck me as a worst case scenario, if Bernie loses the Democratic nomination could he stand as an Independent in the election? I know that if he did, the chances are that the non Republican vote would be split allowing one of the knuckle draggers to win. Really a worst case.

The abuse factor seems to be escalating, Trump is doing his usual, "everybody else is stupid or ugly or both", but a few of the established Reps are having a few stabs at him Jindal, Fiorina etc. I wonder how long before the big money starts the trash Trump ads.

I'm a "fan" of REM on Facebook. For the past few days they have been furiously sharing press releases saying that Trump's use of their music was expressly against their wishes and they definitely didn't ever give permission for it to happen.

I'm glad they did because otherwise I totally would have thought Michael Stipe was a Trumpist (Trumpeter?)